Dan Tappan

@[email protected]
86 Followers
290 Following
703 Posts

Engineer, Songwriter, Musician, Photographer, Music Fan: I post music, photographs, & anything else I feel like posting

Aging nerd. I spent most of my career doing computer networking (mostly at Bolt Beranek & Newman, and Cisco).
Now doing whatever interest me, mostly: music & supporting the local (Boston/New England)music scene; hacking code and bits of hardware for my own purposes (Unix/Linux/MacOS/RPi/Arduino); and being a "gentleman farmer".

Bio/Linkshttps://dantappan.net
PossumIDhttps://possumid.com/gh/dantappan
Dan TappanMar 14

Spring (Dirty Snow)
My Ode to Meteorological Spring

https://youtu.be/HbA7xGS60Lw

This is part of a project to make demo recordings/videos of more of the songs I've written
https://dantappanmusic.com/spring-dirty-snow/
#Uncategorized

Dan TappanMar 10

Coyote Blues
I wrote this as part of a songwriting workshop with Abbie Gardner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b63y04bL2xw
https://dantappanmusic.com/music-lyrics/coyote-blues/

Coyote Blues - March 10, 2026

YouTube
Dan TappanFeb 23
Andrea Junker Feb 23
Judge Cannon’s final blocking of Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents case — because it would be “unfair” to Trump — proves beyond doubt what the public long suspected: Trump and his cronies committed treason against the United States.
Dan TappanFeb 19
John ScalziFeb 19
Remember, kids, whenever someone on the right wants to shame you for something you do/say/believe, all you have to do is say, "Bold stance from someone who supports a child raper" and then you'll never have to have that conversation again!
Dan TappanFeb 16
MostlyHarmlessFeb 15
Dan TappanFeb 8
Scott EdelmanFeb 7
Today seems like a good day to for the Nth time share the only Bloom County strip I ever clipped out of a newspaper's Sunday comics section. It ran February 26, 1989, and oh, how I wish it didn't still seem so relevant all these years later.
Dan TappanFeb 8
Black Aziz Anansi Feb 8
So are we going to talk about the rumor that Donald Trump has an illegitimate half Latino child?
Dan TappanFeb 8
Karl AuerbachFeb 8

Dave Farber - Grandfather of the Internet - is reported to have died.

I was never his student, but I learned my way of thinking about networks, as distributed systems rather than collections of connected machines, from his early DCS work (via my friend and Farber student, Frank Heinrich.)

I had the good luck to interact with Farber many times. I have several hours of unpublished video in which we discussed the history of the internet (and other matters) - I remember that day: We spoke for at least eight hours.

I kept nudging him to revive the history of the Distributed Computing System that he did at UC Irvine. To me that was the start of our modern world of distributed computing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Noqf36Fx20s

50 Years of the Distributed Computing System (DCS)

YouTube
Dan TappanJan 26
spafJan 26
AI:
The patina of precision given to guesswork based on data of questionable quality in response to imperfect queries structured around incorrect understanding.
Dan TappanJan 18

Performer photos from the PCA Open MIke, Parish Center for the Arts, Westford MA - January 11, 2026. Hosted by John Ferullo. Featured performer Neale Eckstein

https://dantappanphotos.com/pca-open-mike-1-11-26/